Modern Combat: Sandstorm Hands-On

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Can Gameloft nail the first-person shooter for iPhone?

By Levi Buchanan

The triple-A first-person shooter is one of the grails of iPhone gaming. Many believe it exists, but it remains elusive and out of reach. MachineWorks Northwest has made great strides with their line of FPS titles like Prey Invasion and Duke Nukem. ngmoco is busy on the ambitious KillTest or DropDead or whatever it is called this month. But Gameloft may be closer than all of them to the prize with Modern Combat: Sandstorm, a FPS shooter with obvious inspiration from Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare: Call of Duty. There are certainly worse games to model your iPhone FPS after.

Last week, I had a chance to play Sandstorm at a Gameloft event. While Gameloft has not released screens yet to share with you, I encourage you to watch the video we have for the game to get an idea of just how visually aggressive and impressive this game is. The sand-swept streets of an unnamed town in a Middle East hot spot look both dangerous and parched. The architecture looks great. As terrorists pop out to take shots at you, they don't just suddenly appear. They smoothly move into position.

However, spectacular graphics mean nothing if the game does not control well. This is one genre that is completely unraveled by poor controls. Sandstorm uses a virtual stick for movement. It is smooth and entirely usable. Aiming is handled by moving a finger around the screen and you are assisted by a little snap-to auto-aiming. It feels natural. Firing is handled by an on-screen shooting button. Again, this is usable -- it works just fine and I was able to drop a few terrorists with good accuracy. But I would encourage Gameloft to take a peek at MachineWorks' tap-to-shoot mechanic. I really like that. It gives shooting a tangible, visceral feel.

Watch the debut trailer for Sandstorm.

Your soldier also carries some grenades into the fight. You tap the grenade icon once to lob a frag grenade into the faces of insurgents. Tap and then hold to cook a grenade so it goes off sooner when you toss it. Weapon selection is handled by touching a weapons icon in the upper-right corner of the screen. The game also uses contextual buttons that appear for specific situations, such as interacting with objectives (like setting ordinance on a radio tower) or taking down a terrorist with a melee attack.

With the exception of seeing an option for tap-to-shoot, the movement controls in Sandstorm are the best I have played in an iPhone FPS yet. The system is smooth, weapon selection is easy, and swipe aiming works well. Couple these controls with smooth animation and Sandstorm becomes a game I am excited to dig into.

My play session did not let me dive into the story either, which is something I hope is engaging. Everybody likes to shoot terrorists, right? But who can deny that the storyline for Modern Warfare bumped it into high orbit? The gunship mission was absolutely chilling in the context of the narrative.

The iPhone is a mass-market entertainment device. But for it to succeed as a gaming rig for the hardcore crowd, though, it must offer the kinds of titles they like. First-person shooters are critical. Is Sandstorm going to be the breakthrough FPS? We'll know soon as the game should be out within weeks.